This song is more of an “impression” than a ballad. It reflects the united optimism of a young couple as they make their way through life, their love fueling a brighter future yet to come.

Sleep By My Side, and Dream(A Beautiful Nightmare)

You’re in love with a beautiful girl. She’s given you a drink that’s left you very light-headed. She reassures you, but you know that beneath the demure smile and grace…

…she’s more than just a bit insecure.

Just how far will she go to insure that you’ll be faithful to her?

Candace Whitney

Candace Whitney is quite real - a tall thin blue-eyed blonde, with a gentle demeanor and a soft voice. I always thought of her as one of the last of the American Ladies. She was eight years older than me, but oh so right anyway.

Our nascent relationship broke down when her friends, who sensed that I might take Candace away, started to poison her opinion of me – which would have been good otherwise (she told me all this). Their selfish motives succeeded and, where they’ve no doubt gone off to pursue their own fulfillments, Candace has remained unmarried to this day.

Such a waste…

Maxim: Always make certain that your friends are true, and truly have your interests at heart, and are not just manipulating you for their own selfish purposes.

Tables Turn, and Matches Burn

If you’re going to listen to my music, be prepared for fits of melancholy.

This is not the kind of song a young man would write – because it takes some time to have this kind of experience:

When you’re young, you will have friends and acquaintances who seem to have ever so many of the things you wish you could have: Perhaps talent, beauty, a desirable lover, lovely children, a fine career or the respect of peers. You pity yourself.

But the world turns, and in the fullness of time…

…you find that those same friends have lost much of what you envied. You may even come to pity them. They may even come to envy you. Ironic, isn’t it? Perhap, even heady. But don’t stand too tall with pride… The world will turn yet again, and once more we find ourselves the object of our own pity, and envious of what others have.

So, if you should envy me now – don’t. Just “watch me, as the years…

Turn, turn, turn…”

Sabre, At Night

Sabre At Night is a character of my own creation: a fictional Super-Heroine, who fleets through the midnight towns of renaissance Europe, seeking to avenge the oppressed and downtrodden. She’s slim and beautiful, it’s true – but no one ever really sees her clearly, as she’s too swift for human eyes to linger upon. All one ever catches of her is a blur of shadow in the night – flashing white skin; long shining black hair streaking; the scent of the sleek black leathers she wears; the passing fragrance that lingers in her passage – could it be musk? and – for the victims of her retributions, the flash of her silver sabre…

…which is the last thing they ever see.

Ah, yes… such is she whom men have named…

Sabre, At Night.

Chantile / Who Are You?

This combined song started as “Who Are You?” – a song about a beautiful young girl living in the Outer Hebrides who is constantly turning away the unwanted attention of young men – preferring to wander the lonely shores.

The other part, “Chantile” (which is her name), is the story of the young man who finally won her, but soon lost her to an untimely death…

…she was only seventeen.

I have also recorded “Who Are You?” by itself – as a ballad, and also as an instrumental. Watch for them!

Blue Morocco

This instrumental piece was intended to have a touch of Spanish structure, with a bit of middle-eastern “feel”. So… think of moonlight playing across the waters of a lively Mediterranean costal village, with dancing in the streets, red wine and lovely ladies – you’ll be right where you need to be!

Cast By The Sea

The long, tragic history of humanity, estranged from it’s Creator, has been a sordid travesty of continuing injustice and oppression.

This peculiar little song is an abstraction of such a people: It could be refugees fleeing Roman tyranny, Australian Aborigines fleeing the sportsman’s gun, early Irishmen under the oppressor’s heal – their harps rent and burned… or American Indians forcibly re-settled in lands strange and forbidding to them. Such ones find themselves unwanted - pressed to the shores of their beloved homelands, burrowing into the earth, longing for some place hide.

Is there no pity for the orphaned?

Ever After

I was single for far too long – and hated it. I’ve been happily married for twenty years now, and would never wish to be single again.

This song reflects my relief at finding the right girl for me, and my satisfaction in staying with her.

Wild Eagles

Jannie was my girlfriend in my mid-twenties, and we were very close. We had many an adventure together, constantly on the run to new things and new places. Some of our experiences had almost supernatural overtones – which explains the ‘given second sight’ lyric.

I almost married Jannie, but couldn’t. …it’s a long and painful story for me, but I have many fond memories of the times we spent together, like ‘wild eagles, in the night’.

May Your Heart Live Forever

A much older friend lost his wife after her prolonged illness. I’d only know them a few years, and so never had seen them in their youth. On display at her funeral was a photo of her – young and pretty, yet with the same tight, confident smile I’d grown to love.

…and the tragedy of it all moved me deeply: To spend perhaps forty years loving and cherishing someone – and then to have them torn from you by the irresistible hand of death! - Leaving you alone and empty.

I pondered this, tearfully, on one of my long trips to Salt Lake City in production of my movie “Bloodstones” – and wrote the gist of this song while driving. It’s rare for me, in that it was written without a guitar in hand – which is my usual approach.

This one’s for the woman in question – Betty. Sometimes good things can come from the most tragic situations.

Catch The Setting Sun

I once ran upon down a deserted beach, hand in hand with a lovely young lady. It was the kind of thing in a young man’s life that…